A French school teacher whose body, face, tongue, and the whites of his eyes are covered in tattoos said he was stopped from teaching at a French kindergarten after a parent complained he scared their three-year-old.
But the teacher, 35-year-old Sylvain Helaine, still teaches school-age children ages six years and older, saying that after an initial shock of seeing him for the first time, his students look past his appearance.
“All of my students and their parents were always cool with me because basically they knew me,” Helaine told Reuters, who estimated he had spent approximately 460 hours covering his body in tattoos. “It’s only when people see me from far away that they can assume the worst.”
Helaine said last year he taught kindergarten at the Docteur Morere Elementary School in a Paris suburb when the parents of a three-year-old not in his class complained to education officials that their child was having nightmares after seeing him.
A few months later, school officials told Helaine he would no longer teach kindergarten, but they agreed that he could still teach children as long as they were ages six and up.
Despite the setback, Helaine said he would continue in the teaching profession as an elementary school teacher.
Helaine said he started getting tattoos at age 27 while teaching at a private school in London when he started having an “existential crisis.”
The 35-year-old teacher said he hoped his students would accept people who are different from them.
“Maybe when they are adults they will be less racist and less homophobic and more open-minded,” he said.
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